Civil War

Abbott applied for a commission as an assistant surgeon in the Union Army in February 1863 but his offer was evidently not accepted. That April, he applied to be a “medical cadet” in the United States Colored Troops but was finally accepted as a civilian surgeon under contract. He served in Washington, D.C. from June 1863 to August 1865, first at the Contraband Hospital which became Freedmen’s Hospital. He then went to a hospital in Arlington, Virginia. Receiving numerous commendations and becoming popular in Washington society, Abbott was one of only thirteen black surgeons to serve in the Civil that fostered a friendly relationship between him and the president.[3] On the night of Abraham Lincoln‘s assassination, Abbott accompanied Elizabeth Keckley to the Petersen House and returned to his lodgings that evening. After Lincoln’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln presented Abbott with the plaid shawl that Lincoln had worn to his 1861 inauguration.

Post-war career

In 1866, Abbott resigned from service to the Union Army and returned to Canada. He attended primary medical classes at the University of Toronto the following year. While he did not graduate, he established a medical practice and was admitted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in 1871. In an Anglicanwedding ceremony in Toronto on 9 August 1871, he married Mary Ann Casey, the 18-year-old daughter of a successful black barber. Abbott and his wife moved to Chatham where he resumed his medical practice. They eventually had three daughters and two sons.[1]

Mary Ann Casey Abbott, Abbott’s wife

Like his father, Abbott soon became an important member of the black community in Toronto. From 1873 to 1880, he fought against racially segregated schools as president of the Wilberforce Educational Institute and was appointed coroner for Kent County, Ontario in 1874,[1] the first Black man to hold that office.[3] Abbott contributed to a local newspaper, the Chatham Planet, and was associate editor of the Messenger, the journal of the local British Methodist Episcopal Church. Abbott was made president of both the Chatham Literary and Debating Society and the Chatham Medical Society in 1878.[1] Abbott moved his medical practice to Dundas, Ontario in 1881. In 1883 he became a trustee of that community’s high school and was chairman of the town’s internal management committee from 1885 to 1889.[1] He also worked as an administrator for the Dundas Mechanics’ Institute.[2]

The family moved to Oakville, Ontario in 1889 but returned to Toronto the following year. He was elected a member of the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic and one of 273 Civil War veterans in Toronto to wear the badge of that fraternity. He was then known as “Captain Abbott”, a rank which might reflect his office within the Grand Army of the Republic rather than his actual rank during the American Civil War. In November 1892, Abbott was appointed aide-de-camp “on the Staff of the Commanding Officers Dept.” of New York. A source of great pride for Abbott and his family, this was the highest military honour ever bestowed on a black person in Canada or the United States.[1]

Later life

At the turn of the century he became embroiled in the debate between W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington over social change. Siding with Du Bois, Abbott believed that Black access to higher education was essential and should not be compromised. Believing that blacks would be culturally assimilated, Abbott wrote “It is just as natural for two races living together on the same soil to blend as it is for the waters of two river tributaries to mingle.” With Canada’s black population on the decline, he thought this was especially true in his own country and wrote “by the process of absorption and expatriation the color line will eventually fade out in Canada.”[1]